Success Court: Working to Break the “School to Prison Pipeline”

There’s a phenomenon in urban school districts that you may not have heard much about, but that is something that weighs heavily on the minds of most educators.

It’s called the “school-to-prison pipeline” or, if you’re a school official, simply, “the pipeline.” Educators know the chilling statistic: if a black, male student drops out of high school, he has better than a 50-50 chance of going to prison. What they don’t know is how to shut down the pipeline, but as KCPT’s Special Correspondent Sam Zeff discovered, it may start with a whole new approach to discipline.

Production support for this story provided by Eric J. Smith of Majestic Rhinos, LLC.

Related Content:Tavis takes his cameras to Washington State, Louisiana, Missouri and California to present a narrative of what is working on the frontlines of reform in juvenile justice in the 2013 documentary Tavis Smiley: Education Under Arrest